I can still remember that first batch of chocolate crinkles. I was 11 years old, and tasked with making cookies for my piano school’s holiday recital. A little stilted Chopin, some virgin eggnog, and an array of cookie-covered platters made the party a great success. I loved watching people enjoy the cookies I had made, celebrating the season with a sweet bite of something homemade. After that my cookie making couldn’t be stopped. Those humble chocolate crinkles were just the beginning.
Every year I tried new cookie recipes. I dipped them, dusted them, and added a pinch of nutmeg here, a half-teaspoon of cinnamon there. Child's play. But as I grew more experienced—and a bit more confident—I started to crave not just a subtle hint of spice, but an intense burst of flavor.
The secret? Definitely not simply doubling or tripling the amount of spices in the dough—that can make cookies turn out overly intense rather than fragrant. I needed to suss out smarter (and tastier) strategies than that. Almost before I knew it, I'd started creating the recipes that would become my new cookbook,The New Sugar and Spice: A Recipe for Bolder Baking. If yourholiday cookiesare ready to grow up, too, just follow these three ideas—and brand-new recipes—to make treats that really pop.
Infuse with Flavor
You probably already know that toasting spices or sizzling them in oil or butter helps their flavor bloom—and the same principle applies for baking, too. For recipes that call for melted butter, just heat that butter with whole or crushed spices, like a split vanilla bean, a broken cinnamon stick, or a few crushed whole cloves or cardamom pods. With heat, the essential oils from the spices make their way into the browned butter and the two swirl around and become one tasty mess. Besides spice, this method creates toasty depth in the butter, a guaranteed flavor booster.
Up the Spice Factor
Sure, a hint of spice is a pleasant addition to a holiday cookie, buttwokinds of spice is two times as nice. Try adding various kinds of the same spice to one cookie to create delicious depth of flavor and an intense aroma. Think vanilla beans and vanilla extract in the same treat. Or, do what I did: Make sandwich cookies with a healthy dose of ground ginger and grated fresh ginger, and then fill them with a candied ginger-spiked cream.
Surround Cookies with Spice
We taste with our noses as much as with our tongues. That’s why creating a pleasant aroma is an important aspect to cookie making. Try adding spice to theoutsideof a cookie as well as the inside for an extra whiff. These hazelnut cookies start with a chocolate cinnamon dough that's rolled in a cinnamon-spiced sugar, and then finished with a sprinkling of fresh cinnamon and hazelnuts. The smell of cinnamon hits your nose at the same time as the cookie meets your lips, producing a complete and enveloping spice experience. Beats a simple crinkle any day.
